Maracaibo

The shores of the strait were home to Arawakan-speaking and Kalina peoples. The city was founded three times. In 1529 the German explorer Ambrosius Ehinger fought the Coquivacoa and set up a settlement he called Neu-Nürnberg, naming the lake after a chief, Mara, who had died in the fighting; the settlers were moved away in 1535. A second attempt by Alonso Pacheco in 1569 was abandoned in 1573 under constant attack, and in 1574 Pedro Maldonado founded Nueva Zamora de la Laguna de Maracaibo for good.

The city became a key transshipment point for inland settlements. During the independence wars royalists and patriots fought around it, and the naval battle of Lake Maracaibo in 1823 was the last major engagement of the war. Rafael Urdaneta, one of the generals of independence, was born here.

The discovery of oil in 1917 transformed Maracaibo, drawing migrants from across the country and abroad. It was the first Venezuelan city to adopt several public services, including electricity, earning it the name "First City of Venezuela". The General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge opened in 1962; in April 1964 a tanker struck it, bringing down 259 metres of roadway and killing seven people. Falling oil output and the economic collapse have hit the city hard: in 2019 poverty and national power cuts set off a wave of violence and looting, and blackouts remain a fact of life.

Maracaibo's music is the gaita zuliana, played on the furro friction drum, cuatro, maracas, charrasca and tambora, with sharp religious and political lyrics. Groups such as Maracaibo 15, Gran Coquivacoa, Cardenales del Éxito and Guaco have carried it across Venezuela, and a museum in the city is devoted to it. The gaita season opens with the feast of the Virgin of Chiquinquirá, La Chinita, on 18 November, and runs through Christmas.

Devotion to La Chinita is the centre of the city's religious life. Her wooden image of 1709 is kept in the basilica, raised to that rank in 1920 and crowned in 1942, and the feast fills the surrounding plaza. Maracuchos are known across Venezuela for their pride, their accent and their use of vos in place of tú, and local culture keeps strong indigenous influences, from music to desserts and customs; the Wayuu and Añú peoples have long lived around the lake.

Baseball is followed intensely: the Águilas del Zulia play at the Luis Aparicio stadium, named after the Maracaibo shortstop Luis Aparicio Sr., father of the major-league star Luis Aparicio. The Baralt Theatre on Plaza Bolívar, site of the first film screenings in Venezuela, and the University of Zulia anchor the city's cultural life, and the city even has one of the country's earliest rugby clubs.

Maracaibo had an estimated 1.75 million people in 2019, and its metropolitan area about 2.7 million, making it Venezuela's second-largest city. It is the economic centre of the west: the Lake Maracaibo basin supplies about two-thirds of the country's oil, and the city has one of its largest seaports, petrochemical industries producing chemicals, cement and food products, and a broad service sector of banks, universities and hospitals.

Life is shaped by heat and failing infrastructure. Zulia has had the country's worst power and water failures, and long blackouts leave homes without air conditioning or water pumps; in early 2023 a solar pilot set out to fit rooftop panels to 400 homes and 100 apartments to help residents cope. Fuel shortages hit the oil state hard, and many families have left for Colombia and beyond.

Afternoons slow down in the heat, and evenings bring people onto porches, into the streets and to the lakeside park of the Vereda del Lago. Baseball games and, in November and December, gaita and the feast of La Chinita are the high points of the year.

Zulia has its own cooking, distinct from the rest of Venezuela, and Maracaibo is its capital. The patacón is the signature: green plantain, flattened and fried, takes the place of bread and is stuffed with meat, cheese and salad, making a large, messy sandwich sold from stands and diners across the city. Mandocas, fried rings of cornmeal mixed with ripe plantain and cheese, are the classic breakfast, slightly sweet and salty at once.

The regional main dish is chivo en coco, goat stewed in coconut milk, a reminder of the goat country that stretches east into Falcón. Fried fish is also among the city's typical dishes. Zulian sweets are distinctive: huevos chimbos, egg yolks cooked in syrup, are among them, alongside a range of milk and coconut sweets, and local culture traces some of its desserts to indigenous roots.

National dishes are eaten here as everywhere. Arepas, split and filled, cachapas, sweet fresh-corn pancakes with cheese, and pabellón criollo, shredded beef with black beans, rice and fried plantain, are everyday food, and hallacas are made at Christmas, when gaita plays in the background. In the heat, cold drinks matter: papelón con limón, lemonade made with raw cane sugar, and fresh fruit juices are the common ones, and strong black coffee is drunk through the day.